The Right to Information

In one line

Every citizen may ask a public authority for any record it holds, need give no reason for asking, and must be answered in thirty days.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the Right to Information Act 2005 creates a practical regime by which all citizens have the right to information held by or under the control of a public authority, exercisable by a written or electronic request that need state no reason, answerable within thirty days and within forty-eight hours where the information concerns the life or liberty of a person, subject to the exemptions in sections 8 and 9, which are themselves subject to a public interest override in section 8(2) that operates notwithstanding the Official Secrets Act 1923.

Why the law has this at all

The preamble states it better than a paraphrase can. The Constitution has established a democratic Republic, and democracy requires an informed citizenry and transparency of information which are vital to its functioning and also to contain corruption and to hold Governments and their instrumentalities accountable to the governed.

Three things follow, and they organise the whole Act.

Information is held on behalf of the people, not owned by the office holding it. That is why section 6(2) forbids asking the applicant why they want it: an owner may ask a borrower's purpose, a custodian may not.

The default is disclosure and the exemption is the exception. Sections 8 and 9 are drafted as departures from a right stated first in section 3, which is the opposite of the Official Secrets Act structure the Act displaced, and section 22 gives the Act overriding effect over that Act and over any other law.

And accountability is the object, so the machinery has teeth. Section 20 imposes a personal penalty on the officer, not on the department, and puts the burden of justification on the officer.

For this paper the Act matters because it is the counter-current identified in [The Information Society and Human Rights]: the same collapse in the cost of storing and retrieving information that lets a State watch a population is what makes it feasible for a citizen to demand a record and be given it in thirty days. A book that treats information technology only as a threat to rights has missed the statute that turns it into a remedy.

The scheme of the Act

Who may ask, and for what

Section 3. Subject to the provisions of the Act, all citizens shall have the right to information. Note citizens: the Act does not extend the right to non-citizens, which is unusual among the rights in this book.

Section 2(f). Information means any material in any form, including records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and information relating to a private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law. The list is deliberately long and expressly reaches opinions and advices, which is what makes file notings arguable, and it reaches private bodies indirectly.